Why Your Business Should be Vlogging and How to Get Started

Vlogging is an avenue that more and more business owners are exploring – but why, and what are the benefits? And, who is vlogging with an impact right now? With YouTube surpassing Yahoo! as the second largest search engine, and millions of people increasingly watching video on mobile devices, establishing a vlog for your business could be more of a must than a luxury!

Benefit: Vlogging creates a personal connection with customers

For small businesses, start-ups and those generating income from a passion (art, writing, design, existing blogs/websites) the benefit of vlogging is that it provides a human face to your company – giving the customer a more personal, personable experience. People relate and connect, and feel they are purchasing from you as an individual, not just a website.

One of vidmeup.com's favourite vloggers, artist and writer Retrophiliac, supported this view when she gave me her thoughts on why she feels her vlog is beneficial to businesses. In reference to her artwork that she sells on Etsy and other forums, she says;

“I like the ability to talk about my current pieces of artwork so people get a feeling for my personality, not just images I've posted online. You need to attach feeling and emotion if you really want to draw any kind of attention. I have had a good array of positive feedback... People seem to enjoy my quick-witted nature and ability to have an unscripted 'conversation' with whoever may be viewing it”

Strategy: Piggyback on the success of existing vloggers

One question for any brand wanting to enter the vlogging arena: why go to the trouble of curating a character and growing an audience from scratch, when there are already high profile vloggers out there who could do the job without the monumental build up required?

In the UK the leading YouTube vlogger is Charlie McDonnell – YouTube alias ‘Charlieissocoollike’. Charlie describes himself succinctly as “an English twenty-something who makes videos”. At the time of writing, his simple yet entertaining vlogs have earned him over 238 million views and 1.5 million subscribers.

At the moment, the ‘shop’ button on Charlie’s profile links to DFTBA Records, an online record label. His audience being mainly teenagers and early twenty-somethings, it's ideal for their marketing efforts.

Another ‘corporate-adopted’ vlogging success is Phillip De Franco - a news and pop culture commentator who boasts over 2 million subscribers, and well over 800 million views. Corporates have not been slow to open their arms to this young vlogger – note the ‘Angry Birds’ product placements in his latest upload.

However, this example should also signal a word of caution to vloggers and marketing execs – if you make the vlog product-orientated, with too obvious a promotional aspect, then viewers may turn away. De Franco has frequently been subject to criticism from former fans, with one commenting on a message board that;

“The guy was just a regular Joe on YouTube, talking from his living room, and now he has a set, everything is manicured to say “This is the image I want to present to you” but none of it is really him. It’s all made up… and he’s vlogging because it’s his job not because he really wants to do it”

The message to any corporate marketing managers: if you’re thinking of ‘adopting’ a vlogger... don’t make it too obvious – people will see through it.

So, can you vlog in your own right?

With the vlog presence on the web understandably dominated by young people such as Charlie discussing teen/twenty-something issues, it may be hard to find an established vlogger who naturally represents your company image – particularly if you are marketing a sophisticated, adult-orientated product.

In this case, there are a few examples of vloggers who have curated their own audience, with the vlog as the centre-piece of their business marketing.

The best known is undoubtedly the vlogger, public speaker and wine retail CEO Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary’s 2006 vlog 2006 Wine Library TV, a daily internet webcast on the subject of wine, launched his career of internet celebrity, and shone a spotlight on his business which continued to grow. Although retired from wine vlogging since the end of 2011, Gary is a clear example of a man who made a success from his passion and his personal, interesting video blogs. His vlogs show a real person, not a corporate drone or actor, with a passion for his topic and an individual, enthusiastic style.

Vlog while getting your business ranking in Google

Here's plus point: you can focus on the SEO even whilst vlogging. Basically, when vlogging you’re putting up new content that you can link to all over the web on your social media accounts: other people can then ‘like’, retweet or ‘+1’ which, will give you a higher ranking on search engines.

Another great strategy is uploading a written blog or article and embedding an accompanying video: this way you’re appealing to two different types of customers; the ones who read blogs and the ones who watch them. As any student of education will tell you, this appeals to the two different types of recipients: the ‘visual’ and ‘auditory’ categories of viewer.

Still not convinced? Then consider the cost of entry benefits

You don’t need masses of cash or resources to be a successful vlogger. According to ‘vlog league compliers’, of the top 10 most subscribed YouTube vlogs in the UK, the top three are individuals, not corporates.

Charlie is in pole position by some margin. Interestingly, the next two highest ranked vloggers both offer hair and beauty tips – obviously a huge untapped vlog audience for UK corporates...

Danny Brent is Social Manager for Videmup.com. He actively shares and promotes the creative work of video producers using the vidmeup.com free online video platform on both sides of the pond. If you have interesting news of international developments in online video drop him a mail info AT vidmeup DOT com

NOTE: Opinions expressed in this article are those of the contributing author and not necessarily that of ReelSEO.com

http://www.BombBomb.com/ BombBomb

Another way of thinking about vlogging is just making a simple video to accompany each of your blog posts. You've developed the idea, you've written it up, and you've created an image or two to accompany, support, and illustrate the post. Now, shoot a simple video reemphasizing the main point and maybe adding a detail or two.In this way - and as Danny describes in the post - you can humanize and bring to life not just the message of the post but your business and your brand, as well.To Manoush's point, there is a basic minimum for video quality, but the "good enough" barrier is relatively low and need not be intimidating.

forbiddentech

Totally agree! Watch this space for vlogs and blogs from us at Forbidden Technologies.

BTW, check this other blog post on the same topic. Any thoughts? http://londonerfromafar.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/vlogging-is-the-word/

veetleinc

Have to agree that video is making a difference for small companies and independent bloggers and the future stars of the Internet. For us at Veetle, the compelling piece is the live component. Stages and scripts are awesome for many use cases, but unfiltered live video can be perceived as more "real" and sincere.

Manoush

Motivating post! I think the barrier to entry is a bit higher than the article suggests though. It's really worth taking the time to prepare your thoughts and make sure your video/audio quality is decent. Crappy video with an unfocused vlogger distracts the audience! Help Save Quality Video- join the Kickstarter #CameraReady project. @manoushz

http://www.kyleclouse.com/ Kyle Clouse

Great post Danny. This is so key. In the marketing videos that we create for our clients we take the embed code from YouTube and then use that to create a new post on their website. This creates a correlation between YouTube (Google) and their website along with building out great content simultaneously.

SlatersGarage

@timschmoyer Totally agree... EVERYTHING about YouTube is oversaturated... However, it makes a great vessel to host and/or carry your vlog elsewhere... On your own website, for example, via embedding... In fact, I've never -- at least not lately -- actually discovered a business blog via YouTube... Even though the vlog may have been hosted on YouTube, it's invariably found its way to me through a link from a Twitter connection or Facebook friend... or another blogger/vlogger...

As far as "adopting" a vlogger for promotional purposes... I still think it's OK to be transparent or obvious about your sponsorship, IF your vlog is still entertaining... The moment you start making the vlog too much about the product at the expense of the entertainment value that you hired for in the first place, that's when you'll see viewership drop off... But, a good vlogger will know how to find that balance and use it so that everyone benefits.

timschmoyer

This is all great stuff. I'd just say that vlogging is a very over-saturated market on YouTube. If your company vlogs, you must do it in a way that stands out from the crowd in some pretty significant ways, especially if the vlogs are perceived to be branded or commercials. Being a business vlogging, there's often an extra layer of skepticism you'll have to work through.

Damian Hoskin

Is Vidmeup optimized for ipad yet?

BombBomb

Another way of thinking about vlogging is just making a simple video to accompany each of your blog posts. You've developed the idea, you've written it up, and you've created an image or two to accompany, support, and illustrate the post. Now, shoot a simple video reemphasizing the main point and maybe adding a detail or two.In this way - and as Danny describes in the post - you can humanize and bring to life not just the message of the post but your business and your brand, as well.To Manoush's point, there is a basic minimum for video quality, but the "good enough" barrier is relatively low and need not be intimidating.

forbiddentech

Totally agree! Watch this space for vlogs and blogs from us at Forbidden Technologies.

BTW, check this other blog post on the same topic. Any thoughts? http://londonerfromafar.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/vlogging-is-the-word/

veetleinc

Have to agree that video is making a difference for small companies and independent bloggers and the future stars of the Internet. For us at Veetle, the compelling piece is the live component. Stages and scripts are awesome for many use cases, but unfiltered live video can be perceived as more "real" and sincere.

Manoush

Motivating post! I think the barrier to entry is a bit higher than the article suggests though. It's really worth taking the time to prepare your thoughts and make sure your video/audio quality is decent. Crappy video with an unfocused vlogger distracts the audience! Help Save Quality Video- join the Kickstarter #CameraReady project. @manoushz

http://www.kyleclouse.com/ Kyle Clouse

Great post Danny. This is so key. In the marketing videos that we create for our clients we take the embed code from YouTube and then use that to create a new post on their website. This creates a correlation between YouTube (Google) and their website along with building out great content simultaneously.

SlatersGarage

@timschmoyer Totally agree... EVERYTHING about YouTube is oversaturated... However, it makes a great vessel to host and/or carry your vlog elsewhere... On your own website, for example, via embedding... In fact, I've never -- at least not lately -- actually discovered a business blog via YouTube... Even though the vlog may have been hosted on YouTube, it's invariably found its way to me through a link from a Twitter connection or Facebook friend... or another blogger/vlogger...

As far as "adopting" a vlogger for promotional purposes... I still think it's OK to be transparent or obvious about your sponsorship, IF your vlog is still entertaining... The moment you start making the vlog too much about the product at the expense of the entertainment value that you hired for in the first place, that's when you'll see viewership drop off... But, a good vlogger will know how to find that balance and use it so that everyone benefits.

timschmoyer

This is all great stuff. I'd just say that vlogging is a very over-saturated market on YouTube. If your company vlogs, you must do it in a way that stands out from the crowd in some pretty significant ways, especially if the vlogs are perceived to be branded or commercials. Being a business vlogging, there's often an extra layer of skepticism you'll have to work through.